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So I had this wondrous idea last night, say, around 1am (so that’s technically this morning) as I was drifting off to sleep after sitting through a rather long and tenuous Redskins game over in Landover, to do a personal alphabet. I suppose I was just looking for something that would provide me an instant topic of conversation as I attempt to blog every day this month…26 letters gives me a pretty good shot at getting through this thing and as I’ve never sat down and compiled a “100 things” sort of list, this would be a good, organized and somewhat inventive way to start a little cyber navel gazing.

Ahem.

A is for Artist

As in, what I do for a living and how I live my life. I graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 1998 with a BFA in graphic design. I support myself by being creative, monday-friday

Graphic design isn’t necessarily the kind of thing you hang on your wall, nor is my particular brand of design always the most creative thing on the planet…but an artist is what I am. However I consider my artistry to reach beyond my 9-5 existence and into other aspects of my life…into the way I see the world, the way I frame picture, the way I compose with words…cooking, even. I’ve long considered myself the type of person who looks at the world in an artistic fashion…seeing shape and line where other people would see telephone lines and tree branches. I draw inspiration from the world around me.

I wasn’t very good at drawing as a child. I hated elementary school projects where we had to draw on manilla paper…the tooth of that paper drove me crazy. It was almost fuzzy…you couldn’t erase on it very well without rubbing a hole through it. I struggled again with drawing in high school and college, getting my only bad grade throughout college in Life Drawing (a C…nearly cost me my scholarship).

Eventually, though, I came to realize that I had a knack for spatial relations…for organizing things on a page…graphic design made sense to me. there was a balance of left brain and right brain. Analytical creativity, if you will. It may or may not be art, depending on your definition…but I will call and classify myself an artist. Aren’t we all in some way?

Thus concludes my rather inane foray into the letter “A”…my brain’s about shot from getting in at 1am last night and I’m not sure how much longer I can attempt to push words out. Stay tuned for more adventures with the alphabet.